“This site is dedicated to preying on people’s vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.”

Monday, November 12, 2012

More on the pussy riot at the CIA

Check out the part at 3:30. It doesn’t get better than this:

Hat Tip: Bob

You may find the full version more interesting if you have the time:

David Petraeus surge in the sack:

Second woman in emails identified

The FBI investigation into General David Petraeus’s extramarital affair was reportedly triggered by a string of harassing emails sent by his mistress to a perceived love rival, Jill Kelley warning her to “stay away from my guy”.

Jill Kelley, the Florida woman whose complaint to the FBI may have sparked the downfall of CIA Director David H. Petraeus, has Philadelphia roots.Kelley, 37, hails from a Lebanese family that emigrated to Philadelphia in the mid-1970s.Her parents, John and Marcelle Khawam, had businesses in the area, including a restaurant in Voorhees. The couple still live in Washington Crossing, Bucks County, according to public records, and Kelley's older brother, David, is a lawyer in South Jersey.Kelley emerged Sunday as the woman who contacted the FBI after allegedly receiving threatening e-mails from Petraeus' biographer, Paula Broadwell, according to the Associated Press and other news outlets. Her complaint to the FBI led investigators to e-mails that revealed Petraeus and Broadwell were having an affair.Kelley works as an unpaid social liaison to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla. According to a statement she and her husband released Sunday, they have been friends with Petraeus and his wife, Holly, for five years.A 1988 Inquirer feature about the Khawam family's culinary roots described Kelley's father as an accomplished musician in their homeland and her mother as a chef who liked to entertain political and cultural figures.In the late 1980s, the Khawams ran a Middle Eastern restaurant in Voorhees called Sahara. The restaurant was closed within a few years, according to a 1990 bankruptcy petition the couple filed.

Two of the people that General David Viagrus Petreaus was screwing and one that the good general was dicking

152 comments:

Why do Americans seem so prone to infantile hero worship? In the mid-nineteenth century, the Scottish man of letters Thomas Carlyle coined the term “hero-worship.” Much of the modern world has an egalitarian distrust of claims of greatness and heroism. If there are no heroes, do we have to invent them?

My wife is having an affair with a government executive. His role is to manage a project whose progress is seen worldwide as a demonstration of American leadership. (This might seem hyperbolic, but it is not an exaggeration.) I have met with him on several occasions, and he has been gracious. (I doubt if he is aware of my knowledge.) I have watched the affair intensify over the last year, and I have also benefited from his generosity. He is engaged in work that I am passionate about and is absolutely the right person for the job. I strongly feel that exposing the affair will create a major distraction that would adversely impact the success of an important effort. My issue: Should I acknowledge this affair and finally force closure? Should I suffer in silence for the next year or two for a project I feel must succeed? Should I be “true to my heart” and walk away from the entire miserable situation and put the episode behind me? NAME WITHHELD

We are in uncharted waters, but that girl didn't blink an eye when talking about sex in the military. You have to admit she's a pretty cool cucumber. Poised, unflappable, but really sloppy with e-mails. It is not only the reputation of Petraeus that has taken a huge hit, but her reputation as well. So far there are no winners.

I'll pass on the subject of the Hero, and popular worship of the Hero, lest I wander over into the mythological realm, where the truth lies, all undisguised, and just say it is, like alcohol, or drugs, or many other things, a false attempt at transcendence.

This is a classic takeaway dish and a classic Chinese snack - Chow mein in Mandarin Chinese is pronounced 'Chao meean and it means 'stir-noodle', i.e. stir-fried noodle. I love this simple dish with plenty of fresh crunchy vegetables and the usual Chinese condiments of light soy sauce and toasted sesame oil - but the trick to getting a good-quality chow mein is in the quality of the noodle used. I use shi wheat flour noodles - 'shi' means 'thin' and whether yellow shi or white - they are easy to cook, 3 minutes in boiling water. Then all the ingredients go into a wok - couldn't be easier or healthier!

Directions:

Cook the noodles for 3 minutes in a pan of boiling water until al dente, or as per the package instructions. Drain, then run them under cold running water, and drain again. Drizzle with a few splashes of sesame oil, and toss through to prevent them from sticking.

Season the chicken with a splash of dark soy sauce, the five-spice powder, and chile sauce, if using. Mix well. Coat the chicken breasts lightly with the cornstarch.

Heat a wok over a high heat, add the groundnut or peanut oil, and heat until smoking. Then, add the chicken, and stir-fry for 2 to 3 minutes, or until cooked through.

Add the red bell pepper, and stir-fry for 1 minute, then add the bean sprouts and green onion and stir-fry for less than 1 minute. Add the cooked noodles, and season with the light soy sauce, 1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil, and black pepper, to taste. Stir well and serve immediately.

1Soak the fish in clear water for 3 days.2Add 2 tbsp lye into a gallon of water.3Soak for 3 days in this solution.4Then soak for 4 days in clear water, changing the water every day.5To cook the lute fish--------.6Tie the fish loosely in a square of cheese cloth.7Drop in a large enamel pot of boiling water.8Cook 10 minutes or until well done.9Remove cheese cloth put on a platter and debone.10Serve with a white sauce or a mustard sauce.

I was raised with having Lute Fish every Christmas. My Grandmother is Swedish so thatis how I was introduced to the fish. As a young child my Grandpa would trick us into eating the fish by mashing it into our mashed potatoes! Then I decided I would just eat it on my own. I like it with white sause and with boild Swedish potatoes covered in real butter. Most Christmass I get two or three feeds of Lute Fish, ist great!5 people found this review Helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes | No

Obama repeatedly and consistently enjoined Americans to reject their most cherished notions, and their moral traditions: the self-made man, he argued, was a lie and a moral outrage ("You didn't build that"); the wealthy have no logical claim to the product of their achievement ("shared prosperity"), and ought to be seen as the enemy of the people, refusing to "pay the same tax rate as their secretaries"; freedom of religion, he demanded, must be sacrificed to the new goal of subsidized sexual promiscuity; and the most primal premise of America's and modernity's political project, the right to self-preservation, must be renounced in the name of egalitarian healthcare.

Every country has its culinary specialties. Nostalgic memories tug at your heart strings if, when separated by distance, these favorites are set before you. Norway's lutefisk is such a specialty to many.

Lutefisk (dried cod treated with lye) must surely be the strangest culinary effort credited to the Norwegians, but what a treat when prepared properly. Everyone of course is not a devotee of lutefisk, but those who are defend it vehemently. Others go to the opposite extreme and claim it's a national disgrace. In years past, the homemaker had to go through the complicated task of treating the dry fish with lye, but now, even in America, frozen lutefisk is readily available at selected fish markets and at Scandinavian delicatessens.

Cooking lutefisk the old fashioned way: Do not cook in aluminum vessels as it will darken the kettle. Use three level tablespoons salt to each quart water. Bring water to boil, add salt and return to boil. Add fish which has been sliced into serving pieces and again return to boil, then remove from the heat. Skim, and let fish steep for 5 to 10 minutes depending on thickness. Serve at once.

Without adding water: Put the serving pieces of lutefisk in a kettle, season each pound (450 g) of fish with 1/2 tablespoon of salt and place over low heat. This allows the water to be "drawn" out. Bring to a boil and remove from heat. Let steep 5 to 10 minutes. Serve at once.

Baking in foil: Heat oven to 400 degrees F (205 degrees C). Skin side down, arrange lutefisk on a sheet of double aluminum foil and season with salt. Wrap foil tightly about fish and place on rack in a large pan and bake 20 minutes. Cut corner from foil and drain out excess water. Serve at once.

Lutefisk with a firm texture can be obtained by first sprinkling with coarse salt and allowing to stand several hours. Rinse well in cold running water, and soak in unsalted water. Then cook or bake as desired.

Lutefisk must be served hot on piping hot plates. Accompaniments vary from bacon or pork drippings, white sauce, mustard sauce, or melted butter which seems to remain a favorite. Boiled and steamed potatoes, stewed whole, dry green peas are a must as a vegetable accompaniment. The only other necessary additions are freshly ground pepper, lefse, or flatbread. In some parts of Northern Norway, lutefisk is served with melted goat cheese.

At our family's summer place in Cambria, CA, handed down from my grandfather, was a single walled knotty pine cabin, with a stone fireplace, a manually controlled water heater in addition to the water pipes in the back of the fireplace, no thermostat, just on, off, high and low.

The electric stove was equally ancient, but I don't recall many details right now, except it had a plug into which we connected a little fan driven electric heater.

In the front yard was a giant live oak tree which had fallen (surrounded by Monterey Pines and soil made fluffy with pine needles) such that twenty feet or so was horizontal, with a hump in the middle, then the oak headed for the sky again with an ample canopy.

Many hours were spent climbing on that tree, the horizontal part of which was over 3 feet across!

The road was dirt, flowing up and down as the terrain dictated.The garbage was picked up by one man, Art Beale, who became a local institution, and I believe his castle on the side of the hill still stands, a monument to a life spent gathering more rocks, bottles, and concrete out of which Art built his abode, terraced up the hill with retaining walls constructed of rocks, bottles, and concrete...

Then came the freeway onramp, eliminating our beloved Oak, and requiring my folks to move the cabin.

I think the state compensation was substantial enough that they decided to build a new house, with the old cabin being rented out for 35 dollars a month for over two decades to Basil Cuison, and Family.

Basil was a death march survivor who lived for quite some time in the jungles as an escapee from The Camp.

They were friends of the family, and I worked four summers with him at a restaurant, I being a Busboy, and he a Dishwasher.

His Full time job was at the Cambria Radar Station, for the Air Force.His wife, Virginia, like so many Filipino women, cleaned motel rooms.Some here may remember Wretch's post titled

"Toilet Bowl Cleaners of the World"

I plan on submitting an addendum titled

"Angels in Paradise"

to pay respect to the 60 or so housecleaning ladies who had to go to work prior to our son's canoe club spreading my wife's ashes, scheduled at 8 am to avoid the Tradewinds, not wanting to have any incidents like the one portrayed in the Cohen Brother's movie The Big Lebowski in which The Dude and his sidekick scatter their departed buddy's ashes out of a coffee can on a cliff overlooking the Pacific in CA.

Problem was, the onshore winds blew them all backwards, covering The Dude and his partner in crime.

Anyhow, these ladies formed a prayer circle at 7:30 am, in the middle of which stood a Hawaiian dude blowing a conch shell in four directions, in traditional Hawaiian Dress and fashion.

When he was finished, all these women lined up, and one by one gave me and my wife's best friend a hug, reducing The French Wench to a puddle of tears.

Anyhoo, Virginia didn't cook Chicken Chow Mein, but her stir fried rice with vegetables were always the staple of our family gatherings.

Basil always managed a smile, and a happy demeanor, despite his experiences in WWII.

LONDON--A shale oil boom means the U.S. will overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's largest oil producer by 2020, a radical shift that could profoundly transform not just the world's energy supplies, but also its geopolitics, the International Energy Agency said Monday.

In this instance, the IEA is using a definition of "oil" that includes Ethanol, Biodiesel, Natural Gas Liquids, and "Refinery Gain" (this is the butane, etc, that is produced when you refine a barrel of oil - be it imported oil or domestic oil.)

Here's what's going on with "shale." Last year, for every hole they drilled in the Bakken, the field production increased by about 225 bbl/day.

This year, every hole is adding about 115 bbl/day.

By this time Next year, the Bakken will be flat, and most likely, Declining.

The Second big shale play, the Eagle Ford in Texas, is running about a year and a half behind the Bakken. Drilling complicated wells a mile below the surface, just to break open some rock to squeeze out a little bit of oil is a tough row to hoe.

We need to remember what is happening here. We have this reckless ego maniac at the levers of power in the CIA, the Pentagon and the gob struck Executive office getting us involved deeper into wars and increasing the chances of a new 911 reprisal strike on the US.

Iraq, Afghanistan, the outrageous destabilization of Egypt, Libya and now Syria have the fingerprints of Petreaus, Clinton and the neocons all over them. We have been decieved, as badly about this “Arab Spring,” as the husbands of the two bedmates of Petreaus. These people are going to get tens of thousands of us killed.

An errant mortar shell fired from Syria landed near an Israeli town in the Golan Heights on Monday, for the second time in two days. This was the sixth time in just over a week that the infighting from Syria has spilled into Israel.

The Israel Defense Forces tanks fired artillery at two Syrian mortar shell batteries in response to the fire. The IDF said it identified precise targets.

The IDF on Sunday fired a warning shot at Syria, after a mortar shell landed in Israeli territory. This was the first time Israel has directed weaponry at its northern neighbor since the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

An Israeli security source said the military fired a Tamuz anti-tank missile with a range of 25 kilometers in the direction of a Syrian army mortar crew that had launched a shell which overshot the Golan disengagement fence. There were no casualties on either side.

The missile fired by the IDF was a Tamuz, an anti-tank missile with a range of 25 kilometers. The IDF's use of the Tamuz was first made public last year, although it has actually been in use by the IDF since the 1980s. The Tamuz was used both in the Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

Western and regional powers have in recent weeks put pressure on a hitherto fractious Syrian opposition to create a unified, credible body that could become a conduit for all financial and possibly military aid.

Top officials signed off on the interviews, which occurred in late September and October, just before the U.S. presidential election. During Ms. Broadwell's first interview in September, she admitted to the affair and turned over her computer, the officials said.

On her computer, investigators found classified documents, the U.S. officials said, a discovery that raised new concerns.

No one is "thwarting" Nuclear (there's even a production tax credit on new Nuclear.) It's just, NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE, wants to put up $20 Billion to build a new Nuke Plant. They couldn't even get financing BEFORE FUKUSHIMA.

---President Barack Obama is spending his first Saturday after winning reelection on the golf course. Today's outing is to the course on Andrews Air Force Base---

Médecins Sans Frontières/ Doctors Without Borders is presently providing vital medical care to countries suffering from "man made disasters" eg, wars, violence and ethnic strife in such countries as Syria, Sudan and Honduras or enduring natural ones such as flooding in Pakistan or drought in Chad. And now they're working in the U.S according to Breitbart.

In its first mission in the United States, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders is helping victims of superstorm Sandy which devastated much of the New York metropolitan area. In a makeshift clinic in a laundry room in Far Rockaway, a hard-hit section of Queens, doctors, nurses and medical students assess patients and help them get much needed medication.

As the organization's website further explains

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams, working alongside local community groups, are providing medical and mental health care to Hurricane Sandy-affected communities in the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island, as well as Hoboken, New Jersey. The vast majority of the patients treated by MSF in the shelters and underserved communities have been elderly, homeless, or physically or mentally impaired.

Please lend your financial support to any upstanding group supporting our large number of permanently disabled vets. Many of whom paid a horrendous price for service to their country. The least we can do is ensure that they have decent homes and the basic necessities as they cope with difficulties that we would wish on no one.

So it's not all biology, or all hatred. More along the lines of "Girls (and Guys) just wanna have fun."

However, I agree. Those 'big messes' looming on the horizon, threatening to transcend geopolitical boundaries, can't be stopped except through an act of divine intervention - or the hubris of human-centric directive, which we are told constantly is a sin owned by Progressives who seemingly can't cure their addiction to the presumption of god-like omniscience.

(Once the naked self-interest argument became threadbare, it was twisted into a case for the developing world: disrupting their energy supply, just as they were emerging into mature economies would be disastrous for, "all of us", a global catastrophe.)

But they or "the other" will never "leave us alone." It will always be something - oil, blue spice, "hurted feelings", whatever. The take-away is to firm up the "casus belli," as the war-gamers call it. People seem to forget Saddam Hussein was a boiled-in-blood (feet-first) bad guy. People seem not to know that the Saudi's, to resurrect a tired pun, are in deep Shi'ite with their support of (extreme Sunni) Wahhabism.

Energy calculus aside, the transition into self-government - The Long War - is a nasty piece of business.

(Sidenote to Rufus: I knew exactly what you meant by "batshit crazy:" a picture is worth 1000 words; in this case just one - Yikes. I had to let it go. Just too extreme to assimilate - from intense librarian to the dominatrix twins in one 24-hr news cycle.)

You will not convince me that selective targeting or the stupid euphemism “taking out,” will do much more than create new enemies and help enlistment with the ones we already have. The one thing all these people have in common is revenge. Revenge was our justification for Libya. They (people in general) do not want foreigners in their lands, killing from rockets and war planes, blowing up their buildings and destroying their possessions and livelihood.

You have argued that short of complete devastation (politically unacceptable), nothing else will work. It hasn’t so far and there is no reason to expect that it will.

I understand revenge and have practiced it. We fought WWII for revenge against the Japanese, with the Germans jumping in for who the hell knows. Not one of their better ideas.

Leaving them alone will not be 100% effective, but keep fucking with people time and time again will 100% guarantee asymmetric retaliation. It happened in 911 and will happen again, probably in a more lethal version.

The only time we should be using the military is in response to a direct attack. At that point, you have Congress declare war and you attack with the overwhelming power of the US military. You destroy the enemy, declare victory, and go home. If your allies are with you, even better. If they are not, piss on them, you do it alone. You don't worry about UN rules that say you have to abide by the 'Pottery Barn' rules. If you are attacked, you don't owe anyone shit.

As you pointed out, they will never like us. However, responding forcefully as recommended will assure they respect us. Do it once, and it is unlikely you will have to do it again.

Of course, that is if an identifiable national enemy is involved.

The War on Terror is not a war. It is a perpetual police action. Chasing one man is not a war, it's a police action. At the end, OBL may have been brought down by the military; but he was tracked down by what amounted to a decade of police work. When you are tracking down criminals you don't catch them or 'take them out' by killing numerous innocents. You also don't justify your actions through the use of pretense and euphemisms.

The other side does undersatand revenge. They could have received the message that we understand revenge to. It could have been done in the three months after 911. But instead, we blew it and for the past decade have pursued policies that have resulted in thousands of deaths (ours, our enemies, and countless innocents), the creation of millions of refugees, and the gutting of our treasury. We went from the world hyper-power to just first among a number of superpowers.

I have railed against the neocon philosophy that is at the root of our interventionist policies over the last two decades, but in fact, that policy is also shared by the liberals in Congress. Unfortunately, the general public buys the bull they are handed about our obligations to promote 'Democracy' and 'Human Rights'. However, those terms get blurry real fast when in the pursuit of them you end up supporting the bad guys under the presumption that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, or when to get one bad guy you have to kill a number of innocents.

we should have ended the monstrosity of NATO when the Berlin Wall fell.

I knew this nonsense was coming.

NATO will defend alliance member Turkey, which struck back after mortar rounds fired from Syria landed inside its border, the alliance’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at a meeting in Prague on Monday.

“NATO as an organization will do what it takes to protect and defend Turkey, our ally. We have more plans in place to make sure that we can protect and defend Turkey and hopefully that way also deter so that attacks on Turkey will not take place,” he said.

Ask our good friends the ass-stabbing Turks if the name, 4th Infantry Division, rings a bell.

I believe what I wrote was "not politically feasible by western standards" which elevates the moral yardstick over the political yardstick, a distinction with a difference.

This group of Washington politicos can't even raise taxes without a CNBC search for a catchy slogan to lead the cheerleading. Why would anyone think that a practical, let alone informed or wise, course-change in foreign policy would rise above the level of "take out" diplomacy?

The circumstances "over there" are way over my pay grade; probably not so much yours, but the Obama administration is, and has been, attempting to orchestrate a retreat. They are operating under circumstances that even shut up Mitt Romney, when the stakes couldn't have been higher.

Aside from the innate complexities, the West has managed to introduce an additional problem of tabloid-level simplification and caricature assassination that leads in one direction only - blaming the Left or the Right for the mess we call the ME.

GWB got the call. He was on deck. I think his reach exceeded his grasp; the "occupy" debate remaining unresolved. BHO got the baton. The schedule is to wind it down during his second term. We'll see. But I will not reduce this nasty mess to an ideological war among Inquiring Minds that really have no desire to know, much of anything, outside of the Dems Bad, Pubs Good arena.

And that alone is what passes for political debate on the red sites, BC leading this bushwa charge of superfluity: Look Pa, the sky is blue. Don't be fooled, Ma, it's those godless, teat-sucking, abortion-loving, greedy, lazy, entitlement seeking, parasitic devil-worshipers from the Big City. Don't be fooled, Ma.

For those who don't know much about the IEA (the organization that put out that silly U.S. oil projection, today,) it is a Very political organization. It is a U.S./Euro functionary - with a tilt, probably, more to the U.S. than the Euros (even though it is headquartered in France.)

Let me say this again. It is a Political organization. Why am I emphasizing this?

Just maybe, just maybe they are trying to lay the groundwork for the "inside" argument that we really don't have to invade Iran after all. Maybe.

Jes speculatin.

Because, they're not anywhere near dumb enough to believe what they published.

The chattering classes can't even be consistent about that: The deceased ambassador being lionized as a martyr was gay, while Mrs Clinton is being cheesecaked to death for allegedly being a lesbian (which I don't believe for a New York minute, anymore than I believe that rumor-mongering crap about Lincoln.)

Turkey said that a Syrian war plane bombed a rebel-held town just meters from the border on Monday, shattering windows in a nearby Turkish town and sending scores of Syrian refugees fleeing across the neighbors' shared frontier.

Along Turkey's border, the Syrian jet struck rebel positions in the Syrian town of Ras al-Ain, which fell to rebels on Thursday during an advance into the war-torn nation's mixed Arab and Kurdish northeast. At least 16 Syrians were killed and 31 were wounded in the strike, Turkey's state news agency reported.

The radical cleric Abu Qatada is a free man again after an appeals commission criticised the Home Secretary for wrongly refusing to revoke his deportation order.

...

The 52-year-old, once described as Osama bin Laden’s right hand man in Europe is expected to be released from Long Lartin high security prison tomorrow. He will be rehoused and subjected to strict bail conditions such as an electronic tag, 16-hour curfew and limitations on internet useage and who he can contact.

...

A Home Office spokesman said: “We have obtained assurances not just in relation to the treatment of Qatada himself, but about the quality of the legal processes that would be followed throughout his trial.

A shooting rampage in March that left 16 Afghans dead in two villages was the work of more than one person, an Afghan police investigator testified on Sunday, contradicting the U.S. government’s account.

Military prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Army Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, accusing him of killing the villagers, mostly women and children, when he ventured out of his remote camp on two revenge-fueled forays over a five-hour period in March.

After a week dominated by the terrible effects of Superstorm Sandy, the increasingly bitter struggle between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney and the continuing fallout from the Jimmy Savile scandal, it was easy to overlook a little story about an obscure Greek journalist called Kostas Vaxevanis.

...

More and more, the scenes on the streets of Athens remind me of the dreadful events of the early Thirties, when economic meltdown, political chaos and a festering sense of resentment paved the way for the greatest tyranny our Continent has ever known.

Yet even in the midst of the economic blizzard, we must hold tighter than ever to the two great principles of free speech and national self-determination. For as Kostas Vaxevanis would tell you, the alternative — a new dark age of repression — is too terrible to contemplate.

You know I have been wondering whether Obama might be the anti-Christ, but I can report more clarity on this issue now -

"I want you to hear me tonight, I am not saying that President Obama is the Antichrist, I am not saying that at all. One reason I know he's not the Antichrist is the Antichrist is going to have much higher poll numbers when he comes," said Jeffress.

It's one thing for a Democratic presidential candidate to dominate a Democratic city like Philadelphia, but check out this head-spinning figure: In 59 voting divisions in the city, Mitt Romney received not one vote. Zero. Zilch.

These are the kind of numbers that send Republicans into paroxysms of voter-fraud angst, but such results may not be so startling after all.

"We have always had these dense urban corridors that are extremely Democratic," said Jonathan Rodden, a political science professor at Stanford University. "It's kind of an urban fact, and you are looking at the extreme end of it in Philadelphia."

Most big cities are politically homogeneous, with 75 percent to 80 percent of voters identifying as Democrats.

Cities are not only bursting with Democrats: They are easier to organize than rural areas where people live far apart from one another, said Sasha Issenberg, author of The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns.

"One reason Democrats can maximize votes in Philadelphia is that it's very easy to knock on every door," Issenberg said.

Still, was there not one contrarian voter in those 59 divisions, where unofficial vote tallies have President Obama outscoring Romney by a combined 19,605 to 0?

The unanimous support for Obama in these Philadelphia neighborhoods - clustered in almost exclusively black sections of West and North Philadelphia - fertilizes fears of fraud, despite little hard evidence.

Upon hearing the numbers, Steve Miskin, a spokesman for Republicans in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, brought up his party's voter-identification initiative - which was held off for this election - and said, "We believe we need to continue ensuring the integrity of the ballot."

The absence of a voter-ID law, however, would not stop anyone from voting for a Republican candidate.

Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia who has studied African American precincts, said he had occasionally seen 100 percent of the vote go for the Democratic candidate. Chicago and Atlanta each had precincts that registered no votes for Republican Sen. John McCain in 2008.

"I'd be surprised if there weren't a handful of precincts that didn't cast a vote for Romney," he said. But the number of zero precincts in Philadelphia deserves examination, Sabato added.

"Not a single vote for Romney or even an error? That's worth looking into," he said.

Line, a 17-month old app created in Tokyo, is trying to reboot social networking for the smartphone age.

The app, which has more than 70 million users, mainly offers instant messaging and Internet phone calls—similar to Internet-phone service Skype. But the company behind Line wants to be more than a messaging system: It aims to use that service as a base for a home-grown Asian alternative to popular U.S. social networks and services such as Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc., game developer Zynga and photo-sharing service Instagram.

For any Republican man considering following in the footsteps of Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) or failed Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock by making insensitive comments about rape, be forewarned: former George W. Bush adviser Karen Hughes will be very displeased.

In an op-ed in Politico last week offering advice to the GOP in the wake of their defeats on Tuesday -- which included Mourdock and Akin, who lost a bid for Missouri Senate -- Hughes lashed out particularly harshly against Republicans responsible for controversial remarks about rape and abortion.

"And if another Republican man says anything about rape other than it is a horrific, violent crime, I want to personally cut out his tongue," she wrote. "The college-age daughters of many of my friends voted for Obama because they were completely turned off by Neanderthal comments like the suggestion of 'legitimate rape.'"

So the "war on women" was manufactured by a biased news media? I guess Karen Hughes didn't get the memo.

You have to take a lot of the Triumphalism of the winning party with a grain of salt, always. I remember at least 3 times that "this party," or "that party" was dead. Only to, voila, be reborn before the next full moon.

However, the Dems have figured out how to get a heretofore erratic (to put it kindly,) but strongly left-leaning voting population (young people, and single women) to the polls. At least it seems they have.

That same agent, after being barred from the case, contacted a member of Congress, Washington Republican David Reichert, because he was concerned senior FBI officials were going to sweep the matter under the rug, the officials said..........

Paula BroadwellFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaThis is an old revision of this page, as edited by 64.101.72.113 (talk) at 21:07, 26 January 2012. It may differ significantly from the current revision.

Paula Broadwell is a research associate at Harvard University's Center for Public Leadership and a PhD candidate in the Department of War Studies at King's College London. [1] Patraeus is reportedly one of her many conquests.References

^ "All In: The Education of General David Petraeus by Paula Broadwell". Retrieved 26 January 2012.

Update: I’m still thinking about Newsweek’s(The Daily Beast) source on Broadwell’s e-mails in the piece quoted above. He was “until recently at the highest levels of the intelligence community and prefers not to be identified by name” and he knows what was in the messages Broadwell sent to Kelley? Is there any obvious suspect besides Petraeus himself?

Naw, not what I was talking about at all. I understand Broadwell's motivation perfectly. What I was commenting on was the "...any woman..." assertion as I quoted it. Sounds like some of the generalizations we get from the experts here.

The characterization doesn't quite fit with the opinions of the women I talk to.

Though I have my anxieties about the president’s next term, I also have a hunch the GOP dodged a bullet with Mr. Romney’s loss.

It dodged a bullet because a Romney victory would have obscured deeper trends in American politics the GOP must take into account. A Romney administration would also have been politically cautious and ideologically defensive in a way that rarely serves the party well.

Finally, the GOP dodged ownership of the second great recession, which will inevitably hit when the Federal Reserve can no longer float the economy in pools of free money. When that happens, Barack Obama won’t have George W. Bush to kick around.

So get a grip, Republicans: Our republican experiment in self-government didn’t die last week. But a useful message has been sent to a party that spent too much of the past four years listening intently to echoes of itself. Change the channel for a little while.

Magnificent Ronald and the Founding Fathers of al Qaeda

“These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.” — Ronald Reagan while introducing the Mujahideen leaders to media on the White house lawns (1985). During Reagan’s 8 years in power, the CIA secretly sent billions of dollars of military aid to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in a US-supported jihad against the Soviet Union. We repeated the insanity with ISIS against Syria.